What to Expect from the Mass Effect 3 Extended Ending

Dave Thier
, ContributorI write about video games and technology.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

It’s finally coming. After months of waiting and protesting, fans of Mass Effect will at last get to see Bioware’s additions to the controversial endings.

A little background: earlier this year, Bioware released Mass Effect 3, the conclusion to the epic space trilogy that pitted the intrepid Commander Sheperd and an elite crew of the galaxy’s best and brightest against the Reapers, an ancient race of sentient machines sent to destroy them. Gamers were promised that the decisions they made over the course of three games would all build to a powerful climax tailored to each player’s individual story of redemption and resistance.

It wasn’t quite like that.

At the end of the game, players chose between three endings – red, green and blue, mostly depending on how much they had filled up a little bar throughout the course of the game. Whatever you chose, it didn’t really make any sense. Fans were so irate that they lobbied Bioware until the company agreed to make an expanded ending to answer their concerns.

We know that this isn’t a new ending. Casey Hudson et al. weren’t backing down off their original creative decisions, and some of the weirdness that irked fans in the first place will still definitely be there. We’ll still have a starchild, a mysterious confrontation on the citadel and all the weirdness that goes along with it. The purpose of the ending, like the name suggests, is to expand all the events surrounding it.

But we also know that there is going to a lot of variation. Fans’ biggest complaint was that there wasn’t nearly enough diversity and choice in the original ending, and judging by the fact that Bioware made the extended cut 1.9 gigabyte download, there are going to be a lot of permutations to the ending cinematics based on the choices throughout the three games.

“Closure” is the word that Casey Hudson uses over and over again for what the expanded ending will try to bring to the Mass Effect series. I think we’re going to see a lot of the friends that we’ve made over the course of the series – at least the ones we’ve managed to keep alive. We’ll see the world that they’ve built, and the world that we saved. Or we’ll see the horrible mess that we’ve left behind by bungling three games worth of conflict.

Bioware has a lot riding on the ending, but in many ways, the damage is already done. If it can release this new DLC and not engender venom-spitting rage, it might be able to just shut the door on this whole saga and move on.